


Two Empresses

by sxetia



Category: Persona 1, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Persona 3
Genre: AU, Gen, Post-Game, What-If, headcanon heavy, yukino loses somebody close to her again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:20:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22260196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxetia/pseuds/sxetia
Summary: In the wake of loss, two women find closure in one another's perspective on the dearly departed.
Relationships: Arisato Minato & Mayuzumi Yukino, Kirijo Mitsuru & Mayuzumi Yukino
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	Two Empresses

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is a sequel to my fic [Picture Perfect](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20822666) which follows a hypothetical scenario in which Yukino Mayuzumi teaches photography at Gekkoukan High. reading it before reading this offers some context and background to the events of this fic!

“Mayuzumi-san…” 

Yukino didn’t expect to hear her name, much less delivered with such formality — times like these she preferred to immerse in silence and relative isolation. She frowned as her focus was snapped in two, opening an eye and peering away from her camera’s viewfinder. 

Standing in the middle of the shrine’s paved walkways was Mitsuru Kirijo — one of her former students, now graduated and surely overwhelmed with the hellish process of ascending to her throne atop the country’s entire business sector. Yukino couldn’t help but let a confused expression cross her features, though she shook it off and replaced it with a grin of familiarity.

“Ah, jeez, Mitsuru — didn’t expect to see you of all people here, but I’m not complaining. C’mere, I’m just trying to grab some decent shots while the sun’s still out. Gotta make the most of springtime daylight hours, after all…” Knelt behind her tripod with her favorite camera angled up at the ornate roof of Naganaki Shrine, she waved Mitsuru over with an inviting swing of her arm. 

Boots clicked on pavement until the heiress stood right behind the photographer, her eyes studying Yukino’s stance and her equipment for a second before offering a formal bow. “Forgive me for my interruption, Mayuzumi-san—“

She near-immediately cut Mitsuru off. “You don’t have to act all serious, y’know... it’s not like I’m your teacher anymore.” Yukino couldn’t help but feel wearied at that — first year teaching, first year seeing students graduate and leave. It made her heart ache, brought back to the moment she left St. Hermelin and Mrs. Saeko. She could only hope that she left half as much as an impact as her own teacher once did.

“You can just call me Yukino.” A cocky grin over her shoulder, then back to her camera to twist one of the knobs and adjust the shot. She still wasn’t used to digital cameras. “Uh—… sorry to cut you off and all, just a pet peeve. Only thing I don’t like about teaching.”

Mitsuru chuckled and assumed a humored grin, before nodding her head. “Right, Yukino…” It felt odd for Mitsuru, so practiced and built for formalities, to feel another’s given name on her lips so casually. She pushed through it regardless, and repeated herself. “Forgive me for my interruption, but I… have something of yours.”

She felt her heart drop right into her gut at that. Yukino knew _exactly_ what Mitsuru was referring to, and it showed on the somber, fearful look on her face as she looked back up at the girl. 

An awkward silence hung in the air, the kind of silence Yukino normally would have killed for when working on her craft. Now she just wanted it to end. 

* * *

“It’s the camera, isn’t it?” About as subtle as a gunshot.

Mitsuru released a sigh and nodded her head, opening her purse to wrap her fingers around the old camera’s tolex shell. “...after Arisato’s death, we found several of his possessions were given to him by some of those he was closest to. This camera was among them.” 

She took a second as if reluctant to show it to Yukino, and then removed it from the bag to extend it to the older woman. “We assumed it was one of his few possessions, but we found contact information written on the strap.” Yukino just stared at it for a moment, then reached out to take it. A little chuckle as she overturned the strap — a name, address and phone number written in silver marker on the leather. “Yeah, that’s… that’s my old address from when I lived in Sumaru City. Never got around to changing it…”

She rest it in her lap, twisting it this way and that to check for signs of Minato’s life — scratches, dents, marks that he had imparted with. Testimonies to his existence. Frustratingly, it looked no more worn out than it did whenever she gave it to him. It warmed her heart; of all people of _course_ Minato would choose to be careful and neat with an old, beat-up camera. 

“...y’know, it’s funny. My old mentor — I gave this to Minato because I was proud of him and I wanted him to go far.” Her words choked in her throat, and Yukino made a sour face. How long had it been since she had cried? She promised herself that she would always be strong, no matter what. Now her strength was waning. “My mentor gave it to me because he was proud of me, and he wanted me to go far… but he only gave it to me as he was dying. And now I’ve got this camera back again, and I have it only because somebody died… **again.** ” 

For once she couldn’t make sense of it. Why did the Gods above have to take the best people away from the world? They had so far to go, so much to do, so many people important to them. Minato often relayed his stories of his woes managing his friendships and how much he often worried for the well-being of those he cared about — a feeling she related to all too much. She silently felt a warm pride in her chest as Minato grew from antisocial to shy to actively making an effort to connect with those around him, and even greater pride as he remained stalwart in his support of others even in the face of how it wore him down. That was what Yukino was there for — just a guiding hand, somebody to rely on. 

But he didn’t go far — he got sick and died on his graduation day, dropped dead on the spot. She just couldn’t understand. 

* * *

Mitsuru’s expression grew pensive, her hands clasping over one another as she bowed her head downwards. She grieved just as much as Yukino did, felt a pain equally as intense, but couldn’t bring herself to show it. Only a fraction shone through as she carefully reached forward to place fingers on Yukino’s shoulders. “Words can’t express how sorry I am for your loss. Arisato—…” She sighed and shut her eyes, correcting herself. “... _Minato_ had so many friends and connections, all of whom are equally as devastated by his passing.” 

She was hiding something in her words, feelings more intense than she let on. Yukino gave her a critical, uncertain look, but quickly let it pass. Her reservations could be easily explained as corporate formality interrupting her interpersonal skills, so she didn’t think too much on it. 

“He spoke about you quite often — the only one of his teachers that he mentioned with any regularity, outside of an academic context.”

“Seriously?” Yukino’s brow raised in shock, and her heart fluttered. Was she _that_ important to him…? Did she leave that great of an impact…?

Mitsuru donned a wistful smile and nodded. “Indeed. He didn’t go into much detail — though he so rarely did — but he always mentioned you and your club with fondness.” 

In spite of the turbulent emotions racking her from the inside out, Yukino managed a smile. She nodded. “...y-yeah, we made kind of a habit. Every Wednesday if we could help it — we’d walk to the shrine here and set up with our photography stuff and try to land this perfect shot...” Yukino gestured with a finger up towards the shrine. “There’s this way that the sun shines on the roof’s shape at this shrine. You ever noticed it? It’s gorgeous. The sun rays kind of peek through and mend in with the colors of the shrine, and it’s just… it’s breathtaking. I’ve wanted to get a good shot of it ever since I first moved to Port Island, but it’s always eluded me.

“Minato and I — we’d spend a couple of hours here every week, just working with our equipment and trying to get the shot. Eventually the sun would go down, but… usually we’d keep talking for a while.” A frown, remembering times of trouble and the look of wearied exhaustion on the boy’s face. “Sometimes he was too stressed out, or exhausted, or just… goddamn _depressed_ to focus much on photography, but he always came. Every time, without fail, like a trooper. Hell, I think I cancelled on him more than he did.” 

Mitsuru retraced her memories, aligning Minato’s stubborn insistence on tending to those around him with Yukino’s own recollection. That dedication to those bonds he forged in spite of Death’s grip over his heart was what enabled him to perform the miracle that had saved each and every one of them, but Mitsuru couldn’t help but mourn Minato’s well-being as she recalled him slaving day-in-day-out over managing his relationships. 

“He cared very much about those around him, to the extent that it seemed he cared very little for himself. Admirable, if not… worrying.”

Yukino nodded and glanced up at the sky for a few moments, blinking her eyes to force away the tears. _Not now, dammit._ “Yeah, no kidding. When we first met he didn’t want to talk to anybody at all — that much changed quick, but he still never really seemed to have much of a sense of self-worth. Miserable, ain’t it?” 

Not even Minato himself was immune to the despair that gave birth to Erebus and brought about The Fall. With how he had suffered and how Death had been sealed within his body, Mitsuru supposed that Minato’s voice rang out more loudly than anybody else’s. It sent chills of sorrow down her spine, but also made the miracle he had performed that much more palpable. 

“Tragic,” she agreed. 

“A… golden spirit with not half as much love for himself as he did the world around him. I… get the feeling that contributed to his death, in a way.” A roundabout means to address the Seal, the power of his bonds, his ascendency, all of which enabled by their collective belief in him. “The official ruling was exhaustion related to illness. It’s as if he worked himself to death.” 

* * *

_He worked himself to death._ God, how hard was he pushing himself? How couldn't Yukino have seen it?

Yukino bowed her head and rested her forehead in her palm, elbow settled atop a knee. “I _tried_ to get him to take it easy. Whenever he was too overwhelmed to do photography stuff we would just sit and talk — about life, relationships, our own experiences. Stuff he never got to really talk to anybody about, what with his parents and all. Y’know, he —…” She stifled a laugh and shook her head. “This one time one of his friends asked to be his girlfriend, and he just asked me how to reject her gently. He couldn’t do it himself, he let the poor girl think that they were dating for like a week. The idiot…” 

Mitsuru had a sneaking suspicion she knew of the girl in question, but didn’t dare speak of it. Instead she let a melancholy smirk cross her lips, fondly recalling Minato’s particular brand of emotional stuntedness. It sounded like exactly the sort of mishap he would create. “It shows that he cared enough to want to do it in a gentle way.” 

“Yeah,” Yukino said, staring down at the camera once more. She thumbed the flashbulb pensively. “...d’you think I could have done more? I was supposed to keep him from running himself thin and wearing himself out — except, well… that was what I expected of myself, anyways. If I had just been a little more firm in hammering it into him…” 

“No,” Mitsuru said as she shook her head, cutting off Yukino’s endless stream of what-ifs. “I think that there was nothing that could have stopped him from achieving what he wished to achieve. He was… _very_ determined.” 

“You mean he was a stubborn jackass, right?” 

Mitsuru couldn’t help but laugh at that, caught off guard by Yukino’s sudden blunt interjection. “...I suppose that’s one way to phrase it. It wasn’t always the most pleasant trait of his to work with.” 

“Yeah, I know, trust me on that one. Took an arm and a leg to get him to talk to me, and even more to get him to open up any. That’s a trait he and I shared — being stubborn jackasses. Part of why we got along so well.” 

Nostalgia overcame her as she looked back down at the camera. “Around December or January — it was around the New Year, I don't remember exactly when. Maybe November…? October…?” It stung that she didn’t remember. “...he said he would be a lot more busy, so he wouldn’t have as much time to hang out.” 

Mitsuru bit her tongue. The Fall and the rift it had torn in all of their lives — all of their sense of normality had been thrown into utter disarray, Minato especially. It was one of the only times he had actually seemed distressed. 

Yukino went on. “So I gave him this old camera, y’know — he didn’t have one of its own, and I didn’t use it. Too sentimental. But I’d rather it get used than sitting on my shelf forever, and besides, it was kinda like passing the torch. My mentor gave it to me, I gave it to him, y’know. It’s a really nice camera, but it’s analog, and digital stuff is all the rage these days. I told him to just keep practicing and to keep taking pictures, even if it’s just to document his memories and his life.” 

* * *

A long, uncomfortable quiet. Neither of them knew what to say. “I still saw him during classes and club meetings, and we still talked and all. I’d ask him about how his photography was going, and he’d say he was too busy and I’d tease him for it. He’d ask how my journey for the perfect shot was going, and I’d talk about it, and… y’know. Last I saw him he was too sick to really talk, but he still would smile and greet me. Should have known something was wrong, how awful he looked…” 

Why didn’t she know? Why didn’t anybody know? It was obvious as they came. 

Yukino brought two fingers to between her eyes and squeezed. “...God, I’m sorry, Mitsuru, I’ve just been running my mouth.” 

Mitsuru shook her head. “Don’t apologize, May—… Yukino. It’s… I’m glad to have been able to speak with you about it. It’s a difficult time, and one can’t go through these things alone. Minato wouldn’t have wanted you to.” 

The tears almost came with that, the muscles on her face tensing and immediately releasing. She had spent Minato’s funeral in a daze, wafting in and out of a sea of unfamiliar faces. People she didn’t recognize — a white-haired boy with a face of stone, a little girl clutching onto her father for dear life. People she recognized but who looked _wrong:_ Junpei’s wisecracker expression exchanged for tears and a hollow expression, and even Mitsuru’s impenetrable stoicism broken down by her sorrow. 

Yukino couldn’t let herself feel it — the loss. She forced herself to be strong, but now it was slowly dawning on her that wounding was inevitable. How could she have let herself forget that…? How could she have lapsed out of it when Minato himself was a living example of strength through wounds? 

She opened her eyes, wettened but not leaking, and stood. Her arms intently wrapped around Mitsuru to squeeze the girl’s lithe frame closely against her, eliciting an uncomfortable noise and a wheeze as air left her lungs. It took a few seconds, but Mitsuru finally managed to guide her arms back around Yukino’s own wide frame. 

“Thank you, Mitsuru.”

“...it’s my pleasure. And thank you, for… everything you did for him.”

* * *

Long after Mitsuru had left, Yukino remained crouched in front of the shrine. Other visitors came and went, paying their respects and putting their coins into the donation box before prayer. She wondered if any of them were praying for Minato. 

The sun was settling, and the sunlight shone over the top of the shrine as if it were a halo of light. Blended shades of orange, yellow and red flooded into her vision, a beauty that she _had_ to capture. She reached for her tripod, but hesitated — then grabbed the old camera ( _Minato’s_ camera) from her bag and pointed it at the shrine.

She clicked the lever back with her thumb, raised the viewfinder to her eye, and pressed down. _Click!_

One photo, and one photo only. It wouldn’t matter if it was perfect, because it was the moment she was savoring, the memory. She almost wanted to ask Minato if he thought that would be the _one,_ before she remembered he wasn’t there. 

And that was fine. 

Yukino packed up her things and went home.

* * *

It would be months before Yukino would step back into her darkroom, the roll of film from the camera in gloved hands. She blamed her lack of punctuality in developing the photographs on business, but she truthfully just couldn’t bring herself to look at any of them. Wounds too fresh, memories too vivid, a woman too vulnerable from the pain of loss to run the risk of getting herself hurt again. 

With the photos developed and dried, she settled them onto her desk and let her eyes rest on them, one at a time. Class was over, her new batch of students had gone home for the day, and Yukino had a few moments of precious privacy. She took a deep breath and let herself dive into Minato’s memories, taking in each of them one at a time to try and fit the pieces together a little more and help herself understand the boy with the biggest, most bruised heart she’d ever seen.

The first few shots on the roll seemed to be Minato’s attempt at general photography — still shots of the hallway of what she presumed was his dorm, the ocean at sunset, a close-up of a grey-furred shiba inu glancing off-frame. 

The more she went on, though, the more insight into his life that he spotted — snapshots of a living room filled with kids his age, probably the rest of the classmates he lived with. He recognized Junpei and Mitsuru, at the very least. One of the photos showed the blonde-haired transfer student standing out in the snow, covered in the stuff and gazing down at her hands. Another showed Minato, Junpei and that _other_ transfer student whose name she couldn’t call — Ryuuji? — in kimonos, huddled around the camera like dogs waiting for food.

She had the widest smile on her face, as if relieved that Minato lived his life like any other kid in spite of all of his particular brand of bullshit. He looked happy in all the pictures that she could see of him.

One photo in particular stood out: it looked like Minato and his dormmates (as well as Mitsuru’s dad, by the look of it — she recognized him from the newspaper reports when he’d passed away) gathered by the front door for something like an official portrait, or… _something._ It was hard to be certain, considering that the photo had been all but _ruined_ by an amalgamation of messes.

The grey-haired boy was shouting at Junpei, who was recoiling in shock, and Minato had been all but knocked out of frame by his thrashing. The young boy in front was struggling to lift that same gray-furred dog mid-bark; the poor kid scared half to death, judging by his facial expression. Even Mitsuru’s steely glare had been broken by her look of shock, with her father standing beside her looking mildly peeved at the entire ordeal.

Yukino realized she was grinning about five minutes into staring at the picture — just kids living their lives, before one of those lives had been cut short. Finally, tears were streaming down her cheeks and onto her desktop — tears of mourning, and tears of joy that she had the chance to experience somebody so _wonderful_ while he was still in the world.

* * *

For the rest of her teaching career, most every student who bothered to notice it asked Miss Mayuzumi about the photograph that she kept pinned to the wall near her desk. She would always crack the widest smile and mention it was a picture she took with an old student of hers. The picture wasn’t the best she had ever taken — a little blurry from being taken so quickly, with the exposure and balance all out-of-whack and poorly adjusted to the evening glow. But still: the shape of the shrine silhouetted beautifully against the setting sun, the hues of scarlet and gold crowning the building with elegant beauty. Not Yukino’s best, but her favorite: she could feel Minato in it every time that she looked over at it.

* * *

Mitsuru Kirijo’s desk was mostly free of personal effects, kept clean and professional with little more than a name plate and her computer rested upon it at all times. Several months into her tenure as head of the Kirijo Group, however, she made a single exception: a framed photograph of a formal group photo gone _horribly_ wrong.

She smiled every time she looked at it. A reminder of the past, and a reminder to celebrate the fact that they had a future to look towards at all.

**Author's Note:**

> heavily inspired by Laora's fic [Long May You Run](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13891899/chapters/31965930) and directly borrows some elements from it, such as Minato displaying his treasured items on a shelf and Mitsuru returning them to their original owners. I cannot thank Laora enough for penning that fic and reminding me why I love Persona 3 (and Minato) so much.


End file.
